World Suicide Prevention Day

Hey guys, today I'm here not with a review but to talk a little bit about depression and suicide since today is the World Suicide Prevention Day. I think raising awareness on this subject is of major importance and it always makes me happy to see how much more open the world is becoming when discussing mental health. 

Bless this

For those who don't know I suffered from depression on my teen years and had two attempts of suicide, one when I was 15 and another at 16, the second time I had side effects because of the medication I had taken and ended up having to be interned on a hospital and later on passed to the psychiatric, were I stayed one week. There was when I started getting treatment and when I got out continued with the psychiatric accompaniment until this day. I don't know what I could have said to myself at that time to make the situation better so today I'm not gonna try to talk inspiring things to get people to see a better way of living but will try to talk with the parents, friends and colleges because that is were the help has to come from.

The first thing to understand about depressive people, especially the ones that are thinking about suicide/already tried to commit it is that they don't care about the great joys of life. They aren't making life more difficult for them when they don't make to appointments, can't keep up at work/class, don't want to be social or get out of bed and do simple things like take a shower or eat. It's extremely hard to them to care about anything, I remember on the first years of my treatment that I couldn't see a future, I was only 16 and I already didn't see any reason to keep going, it was so hard to see myself on college or dream about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life - most of the time it felt like life was an ocean and I was just there floating without really caring where I would go and re-starting to care about things was hard, it took time and so much energy and there was a lot of times when I didn't think I would make it. 

Other thing is that when someone depressed doesn't want to get out of bed it isn't because she/he is lazy or because the treatment isn't work or he/she isn't even trying. Having depression is extremely tiring, I remember that I would go to school and when I got home I would just want to sleep or lay in bed because having to interact with people was so exhausting. The best description that I ever read about depression is definitely on It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini, on this book the main character says at one point that the things to do, the tasks of daily life, are Tentacles and he also explains about the loops that a depressive brain goes on, which ends up incapacitating people of doing the things that they should do and them anxiety levels goes up and the cycle begins. 

So, people that are feeling this way almost never can search for help. First because there is (for some reason) still a stigma around mental health I think campaigns like this one help to take away these prejudices and get people to know more about the subject, but still a lot of people don't want to face their problem and admit that they think they could have depression, I think a lot of people still thinks of depression as a weakness - usually depressive patients blame themselves for not being able to handle with daily things like everyone else around them. A lot of people also think of depression as a excuse for lazy people, that isn't a real disease, so this and all of the symptoms of depression makes the patient searching for help extremely hard.

I would like to ask to everyone to keep an eye out for signals of depression on their colleges, friends and family members if someone you know is starting to change their sleep patterns (having insomnia or sleeping during the day and being awake at night), change their food habits (eating more or less than regular, vomiting after eating without another disease related reason, eating excessive amounts of food at short periods of time/stressful times), start showing destructive  behavior (this could go many ways such as uncontrollable expenses, abuse of drugs or alcohol, and drugs can be illegal ones but also auto medication or abuse of remedies that the person has at home, dropping out of or incapability to keep doing work/college/school without any reason that you can see), develops a new habit that is prejudicial and/or hurtful (washing hangs excessively, cutting, this could be a lot of things too, for instance in stressful times I take the hair of my brow until it goes until the point where I have flaws), changes on humor and/or personality (if the person starts having crises of anger and/or extremely sadness this can be a sign of a mental health problem and not only depression). 

I really hope that this kind of campaigns keeps going so more and more people can get information on the subject and help people passing through these hard times, be clear that the best help you can get someone is by helping them get treatment with a professional on mental health - that can be a psychologist or a psychiatrist. Be ware of the symptoms and always try to help, that is the best you can do.